Social Media Guidelines

The following are general guidelines for optimizing AFS-USA's social media efforts and ensuring that they accurately represent the organization:

Be Our Friend

Please engage with us on social media as much as possible. This means "liking" us, sharing posts, commenting on posts, etc.

Share Our Existing Content, Rather Than Creating Your Own

The official AFS-USA profiles should serve as the primary social media voices of the organization. All content posted from the official AFS-USA profiles has been carefully crafted to ensure brand consistency and compliance, so we encourage you to share this content as is. It's okay to append your own unique message, but the less our original posts are altered the better.

Share Your Unique AFS experience

Q: When is it good to create new posts about AFS?

A: When you are sharing something specifically related to your own AFS experience, or that of your Area Team.

E.g. "It's off to Montgomery Central HS for an AFS table during the lunch periods in search of students to go abroad and new host families for the fall. Wish us luck!"

Make It Appropriate

General audiences tend to regard anyone promoting AFS-USA as a representative of our organization's character. Before you post anything related to AFS, or even just share our content, please consider whether your personal profiles, photos, and posts contradict AFS-USA's mission or values in any way.

Ensure the Privacy of Students and Host Families

Please help us ensure student's privacy by:

Never using a student's last name in posts.

Never making publicly available any photos of students whose parents have denied us the ability to do so.

To find out which student's parents have denied, you can:

View Form 6 in a student's application.

Or, use the "Denied Media Consent" filter in Global Link to search for all students in your area whose parents have declined.

Ensuring that all host family or other community members have signed the media release form before posting photos or videos of them.

Never tagging students in photos.

Reading and following all compliance guidelines.

Create Facebook Groups, Rather than Pages

Social media efforts work best when an organization is able to carve out a niche for itself and become a recognized voice. For that reason, it is important that the official AFS-USA Facebook page be seen as "The" voice of AFS-USA to avoid confusion and solidify our online identity. If you feel you need a space on Facebook for your Area Team, please create a "group," as these compete less with pages.